Rising Child Labour

My name is Anand. I am from Kerala, India. Let me get to the
point very quickly. I am a student now and a part time activist
in my immediate locality working for the uplifting of children
who have no hope for education and a square meal a day. In the
past couple of years, a very interesting trend of child migration
was spotted in our area. Many of these migrations were a family
affair, in a hope of earning a living somewhere. Kerala is
currently a hot spot for migrations within India. But what was
disturbing is that it were the children who were willingly or
unwillingly being asked to go to work and earn a living.

Here, I believe, there are two types of child labor. One, can be
termed a forced mode of child labor and the next an unforced
mode. If the police and government take initiatives I believe the
first type of child labor can be easily prevented from decaying
our society. But the second one requires more effort.

At a time when a child becomes the only hope of a family, and he
willingly takes responsibility of taking the burdens of his
family, very little can be done. Displacing him from the current
fame of things then as I see it, can lead to deeper problems.
That is where UNICEF and other powerful organization come into
the picture. I certainly believe UNICEF should collaborate more
with state governments in India rather than with the Central
government, because India is a very diverse country with varying
lifestyles and even more varying problems. The current system can
do very little in a state like ours. Because here children are
not being forced to take up a job, they are taking it up because
they want to. I do not think such problems can be solved easily.

The root of all social evils today is illiteracy. It is the same
with child labor too. With the current system I believe
eradication of unforced child labor is close to impossible. A
large source of fund and an even larger source of free education
is required to do it. Currently I am trying to form a group to
put up a small fight. Again, that would be a hard job with my
studies going on still. We need a cure. We need it fast.